Akron/Family - Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free (Dead Oceans)

Akron/Family lost a member between 2007’s Love is Simple and the new Set ’Em Wild, Set ’Em Free, but being short-handed doesn’t seem to be holding them back. Set ’Em Wild is even more sprawling than anything the band has done before — something of an achievement from an outfit that’s equally comfortable with folksy ditties, tribal shoutalongs and avant-noise experiments.

“Everyone is Guilty” kicks things off with the tightest groove the band has ever recorded, before abruptly giving way to a rapid-fire bridge and a hard-rock riff that disappears almost as soon as it arrives. It’s a joyful mess, a sprawling epic that captures everything that makes Akron/Family special: their boundless creativity and sheer musicianship.

In that sense, it’s an apt opener for an album that eschews easy categorization. The more subdued “River” follows, meandering effortlessly between Americana and Graceland-style globalism — it’s a testament to “Everyone is Guilty” that “River” actually sounds straightforward in comparison, despite its myriad influences. There are recurring touchstones throughout Set ’Em Wild — drum circle percussion, gospel harmonies, classic rock jams, abstract detours — but nothing concrete enough to pin the band down. The delicate finger-picking on “The Alps and their Orange Evergreen” is worlds away from the paranoid freakout of “MBF,” with its squealing guitars and circuit-bending weirdness. Neither of those songs share much with the slinky “Many Ghosts,” either, aside from the general anything-goes attitude.

The sprawl does have its drawbacks. At first blush, Set ’Em Wild doesn’t feel as much like an album as Love is Simple did. The only thing holding the tracks together is the band’s reckless enthusiasm, which isn’t always enough. The album lacks Love is Simple’s careful ebb and flow, too — the band seems to be dashing for every idea in sight, and working out the details later.

Considering it’s a transitional album — their first as a trio, and their first for the fast-growing Dead Oceans label — Set ’Em Wild’s eclecticism is understandable. It’s the sound of Akron/Family working out a new identity, and every experiment provides another possible path for the future. On the album closer, “Last Year,” the band repeats the refrain, “This year is gonna be ours.” They mean it.

Leonard Cohen - Live in London (Sony)

It’s a widely known secret that Leonard Cohen’s first concert tour in 13 years was prompted by financial woes. When his manager (allegedly) ran off with Cohen’s savings and the publishing rights to his songs, the then-71-year-old had little choice but to hit the road and recoup some of the losses.

Judging from Live in London, though, the tour was far from a mere cash grab. The double-disc set captures Cohen’s entire two-and-a-half-hour performance, stage banter and all, and the result is pure magic.

Cohen is one of those artists who wears his age like a fitted suit, and his gravelly baritone has never sounded better. Even in his early days, he wasn’t so much a singer as a voice — like Bob Dylan, his melodies have always been more implied than sung — but what the voice lacks in melody, it more than makes up for in emotional depth. From the raspy whisper of “Bird on a Wire” to the sinister lecherousness of “Everybody Knows,” Cohen’s performances are never overplayed, but there’s never a moment where you don’t know exactly what he’s thinking.

Though this is clearly Cohen’s show, he’s humble enough to spotlight his band at every turn. Backing vocalist Sharon Robinson and multi-instrumentalist Javier Mas earn multiple plaudits from the veteran singer-songwriter, and rightly so — Robinson, along with Charley and Hattie Webb, enrich every song with their harmonies, and Mas’s gypsy-influenced strings add invaluable colour.

Near the beginning of his set, Cohen jokes that it’s “Wonderful to be gathered here on just the other side of intimacy.” Self-deprecation aside, Live in London is proof that Cohen is a master at seducing, engaging and manipulating his audience. Despite his tour’s fiscal origins, Live in London is as vital as anything in the man’s catalogue.

Magic Flute - review

Director Kenneth Branagh has always been a traditionalist. Back when Baz Luhrmann was updating Romeo and Juliet for the MTV generation, keeping the language and adding frenetic visuals and a killer soundtrack, Branagh directed a four-hour version of Hamlet, the most faithful version ever put to film. Luhrmann’s movie sparked a sensation, proving Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers were still relevant to self-absorbed teens everywhere. Branagh’s, not so much.

With The Magic Flute, Branagh brings Mozart’s singspiel (an opera with occasional spoken dialogue) to the screen, but his adaptation is too timid to win over a wider audience. He sets the film in the First World War, but the setting never really jives with the opera’s magical world. He loads every frame with visual effects, but the cheap CGI doesn’t impress. He enlists beloved British comic Stephen Fry to translate the songs from their original German, but the story itself is too episodic to work as a film.

The plot follows a standard fairy-tale mould. Tamino (Joseph Kaiser), a handsome young soldier, is recruited by the Queen of the Night (Lyubov Petrova) to rescue her daughter from Sarastro (Rene Pape). Tamino immediately falls in love with the daughter, and with the help of a goofy sidekick and an eponymous magical instrument, he sets about his quest. Branagh keeps a relatively lighthearted tone throughout, and while that suits the opera’s sillier moments, it’s often a jarring contrast to the setting. Most of the time, the trenches and even the no man’s land don’t seem like terribly unpleasant places to be. There’s certainly never a sense that any of the characters are in danger, so watching the film is more a matter of waiting for things to happen than wondering how the story will turn out.

Naturally, the movie’s chief strength is its soundtrack. The Magic Flute is one of the most frequently performed operas in North America and one of the most beloved of all time, and Branagh’s cast performs it beautifully. Even when the visuals are at their most questionable, it’s always possible to close your eyes and enjoy the film on a purely aural level. Doubtless, there will be dedicated opera buffs who disagree, but untrained ears will have a hard time finding flaws in the vocal acrobatics — Petrova is particularly impressive in a highly demanding role.

Beautiful vocals may be enough for the converted, they’ll do little to sway those who instinctively dread opera. Where Luhrmann intuitively knew how to use film’s strengths to flatter his source material, Branagh simply doesn’t, and the results never quite justify the adaptation.

Disney’s documentary legacy

On April 22, Disneynature (a wing of Disney devoted to nature docs) will release Earth, a companion piece to the BBC’s widely acclaimed Planet Earth TV series. What better time to examine the legacy of Disney’s previous foray into nature documentaries? Namely, one of the most persistent urban legends of the last half-century, and one that started right here in Calgary.

Without Disney’s 1958 film White Wilderness, none of us would ever have heard of the phenomena of lemmings committing mass suicide. That Academy Award-winning film was the first to ever show the poor little critters clamouring over each other to be the first to snuff it when faced with overpopulation. No one had managed to capture such a moment on film before — mostly because it never actually happens.

It’s hard to say why White Wilderness’s filmmakers decided to make up the lemming story. Most likely, it was just to make things more interesting. Documentary standards weren’t particularly stringent back then, and it wasn’t uncommon for filmmakers to rig up situations that would make for good viewing. Usually, that just meant giving a predator a helping hand — a little bit of bloodlust never hurt any film, though it did hurt more than a few innocent rabbits. White Wilderness just took things a bit farther.

According to the CBC film Cruel Camera, Disney’s filmmakers took a group of lemmings from their natural habitat in the Hudson Bay and flew them to Calgary. They placed them on a large turntable to film the migration scene, and once they were good and disoriented, they herded the confused little rodents off a cliff. With carefully chosen camera angles, they made it look like a suicide, but this was cold-blooded murder.

The myth of the suicidal lemming makes for a great metaphor (and back in the ’90s, it made for a great computer game as well). It’s the ultimate extension of groupthink; mindless conformity for conformity’s sake. But anyone who thinks that it’s grounded in reality, well, they’re just lemmings.

Rourke wrestles again

In what’s either a brilliant bit of marketing for an art house film or just another chapter in an increasingly bizarre Hollywood story (or maybe both), actor Mickey Rourke appeared at Wrestlemania last weekend, sparring briefly with pro wrestler Chris Jericho. Rourke’s appearance had been rumoured as early as January, although it was fervently denied by everyone involved — one theory held that the actor had pulled out for fear that such a stunt would hurt his chances at picking up the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. He didn’t win anyway — shame on you, Oscars — but now that he’s actually stepped into the ring, it’s worth wondering why he’d be worried.

No doubt about it, wrestling is widely looked down upon. The silly costumes, soap-opera scenarios and cheap titillation all scream low culture, and even though everyone involved is well aware of the theatricality, wrestling fanatics are generally stereotyped as, well, dumb.

Still, everyone has their pop culture vices. Some people use the term “guilty pleasure,” but that guilt is unnecessary — there probably isn’t a person alive who hasn’t laughed at a good old-fashioned dick and fart joke at some point in their life. Even Shakespeare laced his plays with bawdy humour, and there are artists in almost all mediums who’ve spent the last several decades trying to eliminate distinctions between high and low art. Really, is Rourke stepping into the ring that much less dignified than him appearing in an Iron Man sequel, as he’ll reportedly do next year? Both are flashy, violent and full of grown-ups in silly costumes, but no one would ever wonder if Iron Man 2 would kill an actor’s chances of being taken seriously.

It’s hard to say whether Rourke’s appearance was a lark, a bit of self-promotion or an orchestrated move to promote a low-budget critical darling, but it’s equally hard to see where the harm is. After all, despite its subject matter, The Wrestler isn’t exactly the kind of film that’d be on the stereotypical wrestling fan’s radar. Exposing a top-notch movie to a wider audience while indulging in a little bit of crass fun — sounds like a win-win to me.

Where the Wild Things Are

For a certain breed of monster-obsessed kid, there is no better children’s book than Maurice Sendak’s 1963 classic, Where the Wild Things Are. The story of an angry kid named Max who travels to a world full of beasts, Sendak’s simple tale and wonderfully distinctive illustrations stick with anyone who sees them.

It’s also the kind of book that doesn’t seem easy to adapt to film. Hollywood would obviously try — the film industry has always seen dollar signs in childhood nostalgia — but folks who cherish the book have been justifiably apprehensive. There’s already been an animated version (all of seven minutes long), but stretching Sendak’s 10-sentence story to feature length and still retaining the magic of the book seemed an impossible task. Naturally, fans have been preparing for the worst since a film was inevitably announced.

Not that the announcement wasn’t intriguing. Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovitch, Adaptation) would direct — not exactly an obvious choice for a kids’ movie. David Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, would co-write the script — his first time writing for a film. At the very least, it’d be unconventional.

Now, the trailer is out. Playing at screenings of Monsters vs. Aliens (and, more importantly, widely available on the Internet), it’s a remarkable piece of work. There’s only one line of dialogue — a James Gandolfini-voiced Wild Thing saying to Max “I didn’t want to wake you up, but I really want to show you something” — but the book was never about the words, anyway. The visuals are bang-on — Jonze and company have chosen to use real people in giant, nine-foot-tall costumes for the Wild Things, with CGI to make the faces more expressive, and it looks like it’s paid off. Arcade Fire’s über-triumphant “Wake Up” plays in the background, and the combination of music and imagery is enough to make tears well up, even in folks who haven’t read the book.

Granted, a two-minute trailer isn’t a full movie, but for anyone who wants to believe that a cherished part of their childhood can be handled with care by Hollywood, this trailer is a damned good sign.

SXSW 2009

Every March, tens of thousands of music fans, industry workers and hangers-on descend upon Austin, Texas for South by Southwest (SXSW), an orgy of sheer aural mayhem. With nearly 2,000 musical acts performing in every available space the city’s downtown has to offer, it’s the kind of event that’s difficult to sum up in a paltry few words. What follows, then, is the thoroughly non-comprehensive Reader’s Digest version of the festival — for those who need more, myself and Patrick Boyle chronicled our progress on the Fast Forward blog (ffwdweekly.com/blogs/stranger-in-the-alps/).

Wednesday, March 18

Best performance: Though it’s not exactly unexpected, folk songwriter extraordinaire M. Ward’s set at the Central Presbyterian Church is a thing of beauty. His guitar chops are unbelievable, his songs somehow sad and uplifting all at once, and the venue — forgive the pun — is immaculate.

Most awkward stage banter: Human Highway’s Nick Thorburn adopts a Texas accent and asks the crowd why they showed up — “Didn’t y’all just get laid off?” He also mutters that the less-than-enthralled crowd should “wake the fuck up” before playing a lovely rendition of “Sleep Talking.” Classy.

Best lecture: Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker delivers an hour-and-a-half long lecture on song lyrics, in which he sings a karaoke version of Des’ree’s 1998 single “Life” (worst pop lyrics ever, according to a 2007 BBC poll) and performs the first song he ever wrote, a teenage pun-fest called “Shakespeare Rock.” If university was more like this, I wouldn’t have been in such a rush to get through it.

Thursday, March 19

Biggest disappointment: During Devo’s press conference, they accuse David Byrne of stealing their dance moves and claim that bands these days just don’t have “Devo content.” Also, their new song, “Don’t Shoot, I’m a Man” is painfully mediocre. Before seeing them talk, their Friday night set is my most anticipated concert of the week. After, I don’t even bother attending.

Biggest surprise: Lucking into wristbands for the Playboy party. A mysterious stranger tells Pat and I to show up at a certain location and say that we “got the text message” to get access. The party, held in an abandoned Safeway, is a blast, featuring a stunning performance by the original lineup of Jane’s Addiction. Say what you will about Perry Farrel’s last decade (and you’ll never convince me that Dave Navarro isn’t a douche), but the guys still know how to put on a show.

Hometown hero award: Calgary rockers Women’s set at the Mohawk is so packed that the manager of their label can’t even get in the door. Looks like the buzz around these guys won’t die down any time soon.

Friday, March 20

The “Everyone was right” award: I’d always heard that The Hold Steady are one of the best live bands going, but chalked it up to being a byproduct of their Springsteen aping. Nope — they’ve earned this one on their own. Drum and Monkey manager Dan Northfield describes the crowd as a “brodeo,” but what’s a few chest-bumps among friends when the music’s this good?

Saddest sight (tie): Tough call. Seeing melodic popsters Takka Takka play a show to half a dozen people certainly rubbed in the importance of booking a good venue, but I might have to give this one to myself for calling it an early night on account of exhaustion. If I’d pressed on, though, the award would probably go to Tinted Windows, the supergroup consisting of members of Smashing Pumpkins, Cheap Trick, Fountains of Wayne and Hanson.

Saturday, March 21

Best decision: Stopping in to see funnyman Eugene Mirman was a stroke of genius. With all the music at the festival, it’s easy to forget about the comedy lineup. Mirman’s rant about Delta Airlines was worth missing any number of middling indie rock acts.

Most abrupt ending: Erykah Badu plays two songs after starting her set an hour late, declares that she’s going to take the crowd to hyperspace, and disappears. Confused attendees crowd the exits, making it almost impossible to leave. Never a good sign.

And speaking of abrupt endings….